🐈"A fuckin quarter man. Bloody dot-man"🐈

When you came into my life I was lost

And you took that shine to me, at what cost?

You recognised the smell, human pain

anthro sol requested for @john-roaring-kaard this man 100% listens to clarence clarity

design notes:

a hippie type with lots of gaudy jewellery. claims he is rich and talented

transmasculine, didn't get top surgery because he's "above it" (compulsive liar who pisses off every doctor in a 10 mile radius)

colours on the waistcoat represent the three

ugly sandals

Everything moves, everything pulses

but the person who needs him most the only one subservient and adoring and frankly weak and vulnerable enough to fill that void in him is niall.

and it is not really in the normative frames of masculinity to have that sort of violent possessive and psychosexual fixation on a younger man and that just makes ruben more violent and cruel and dismissive because he thinks if he dominates niall enough if he puts him into these specific boxes (his stupid little brother, his social and sexual inferior, his literal houseservant) it will hide the implications of his fixation and need to help niall but ultimately doing all these things just reveals how odd it is. if he really didn't care why on earth finance niall's life, why take so much pleasure in niall's helplessness - as a way to exert control, yes, but also a way to nurture reliance.

ruben's masculinity, his sense of self, is just as reliant on niall as niall's is reliant on ruben. that's why he's so angry when niall goes off to university, where ruben's lack of academic success, his misogyny, his violent tendencies, and his general working class demeanor make him reliant on niall for access to spaces. it's why he's so resentful and enraged that the one time HE desperately needed niall - during his trial - niall 'betrayed' him. it's why he's so angry when niall tells him he is having a child, a step towards a life without ruben in a patriarchal mould ruben cannot emulate due to his infertility. throughout the whole show, even through his relationship with ava, ruben suspects (read: knows) niall is gay. its fine he's with ava because it's a sham relationship and niall is still financially and psychologically reliant on ruben. it's obvious why he's so angry about niall's sleeping with mona - it's a complete and total betrayal from the people he imagines as needing him most. and it's why he kills niall on his wedding day, when niall's close to finding fulfillment and stability completely apart from ruben.

that's the paradox of ruben as a character - he's a symbol of toxic, masculinist, heterosexual hegemony yet his manhood is totally reliant on an effeminate and waifish boy that's in love with him. niall is the only one pathetically dependent enough to properly fill up ruben's 'needed' barometer, to make him feel like a man. but that's not very masculine at all.

"from the start they knew you were wrong"